


The Women

by LittleSammy



Category: NCIS
Genre: Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-26
Updated: 2012-04-26
Packaged: 2017-11-04 08:42:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,049
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/391930
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LittleSammy/pseuds/LittleSammy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tony, stuck in his own head, and yes, it is kinda, sorta T/Z, but mostly it just hurts.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Women

**Author's Note:**

> I started out to write this for the second prompt of session 5 of LFWS on LJ, but soon I realized that it didn't want to work as the first person format the prompt demanded. 
> 
> Set halfway through season eight, but no real spoilers.

His mother, as it would turn out, was the first of the steady women in Anthony DiNozzo's life who died just to leave her mark on him. For eight years she had been in his life, lovingly, steadily, for each day from the moment he opened his eyes to when she told him good night and kissed him on the forehead. And then, one morning, the world shifted and she suddenly wasn't around anymore. 

Whenever he stops to think about that moment now, that moment when he learned that she would never kiss him good night again, he is pretty sure it did not come as quite the same surprise for his dad, who told him once -- just once -- before the funeral to stop crying and behave like a man. Who told him that letting your emotions show like that was weakness and that it would make bad things happen. (And in hindsight, dad hadn't been that far off the mark, really.)

Nannies changed rapidly after that. Step moms turned over even faster. First loves were followed by second and third ones, and after too short a while they kinda blurred into each other because young Tony learned not to get attached to any of them. It worked for him, and it worked for them, and it kept things nicely uncomplicated. Most of all, though, it kept things safe, and it worked so well for him that he almost forgot about the curse of attachment and steadiness.

He didn't even realize that he had fallen a little bit in love with Kate until her blood sprayed all over his face on a goddamn rooftop. He still remembers how his first thought was that it had been his fault, for letting her get too close, and that was kinda ironic in itself because Kate never was all that close. At least in theory.

He works hard to not forget again and to keep things simple and unattached, and he mostly succeeds. He misses steady and reliable, but it's not worth it if it's going to be taken away when he least expects it anyway.

On the days when he is weak enough to try being honest with himself (or when he is so far into the bottle of vodka that he's almost out cold) he can even admit that he's not quite sure why Jeanne is still alive.

Maybe his theory simply doesn't apply to the French. Maybe it's because she's never really been in _his_ life, but rather in Tony DiNardo's, who was more of a coward and at the same time less of one than Tony DiNozzo is. Maybe, though (and that is the place he can only go to when he knows for sure he is so drunk that the next morning he won't remember thinking it in the first place) it's because he never really loved her in the first place. Maybe it was something similar to Stockholm. Same kind of thing that makes potential supermodels cling to each other in casting shows. Because there is no one else around who understands and no one else to cling to, and after a while the girl you just met a couple of days ago is the most intimate friend you ever had in your entire life.

To this day, mostly on his drunken nights, he still blames himself for Paula because he can't help thinking that he could have done more to keep her out of it. He should have seen it coming, really. He should have been better, faster, less involved. Or more involved? He's not sure.

But by the time she'd died she had been just a friend, and he'd thought that made her safe. Apparently, she had still been steady enough to get herself killed. She'd gotten too close and she'd liked him too much, and it was stupid and useless how things had turned out for her, but that's how it was. 

And now, there's Ziva.

He certainly never saw _her_ coming. He also didn't plan on falling in love with her, but minds are fickle things and hearts are untrustworthy, and so it happened anyway, without him having a say in it. By the time he knew what was going on and tried to deal with it properly, it was already too late and she was gone and he got punished for wanting her, just like that. 

Or rather, she got the real punishment. Three months she never spoke about, but they were under her skin all the same, sometimes swirling just below the surface and willing to break through any second. Three months in which he had done nothing more than to just grow numb and cold and dead inside.

He's too aware of the fact that it was just a warning shot. That yes, she came back to him, broken and battered, but still there, still alive, and still steady. And he desperately wants to keep things this way. Wants to keep her around until he's old and grey, even though he has no idea how to do that without ruining it like he always did before. Without compromising her. Without getting her killed, again, and this time for real.

He pretends not to notice, but he knows why she's prodding him these days, like a scientist poking a rat and trying to get it to do exactly what the study demands. Why she's flipping her hair and pursing her lips at him and still flirting with other guys. He is way too aware that she tries her best to get a reaction out of him, any reaction, one way or the other. He sees her moves coming from a mile away. He knows all the hows and whys and whatnots. And he dreads the day when she will simply stop because there is not the reaction she wants to get from him.

Part of him wants to do nothing more than to acknowledge her wanting to be steady, for him, with him. Part of him wants to simply reach out and touch her.

The bigger part of him, though, knows that he can't do that. Because if he does, she will burst like a bubble. And this time he won't survive the feeling of warm spray on his face.


End file.
